Travelers who are forced to sit for a long time in an upright posture have long struggled with obtaining adequate neck support and back support so that back or neck problems are not made worse as a result of their having to sit for a long time in planes, cars, buses, or trains. As a result of this problem, different types of neck pillows have been developed.
In general, most neck pillows are horseshoe-shaped collars which fit around the neck of the wearer. The horseshoe-shaped neck pillow, ideally, fits around the neck and sits on the shoulders and supports the back of the neck to prevent the head from tilting sharply to one side, so that any hinging of the neck (such as might occur when a person nods off to sleep) is minimized. Neck pillows also fill in the gap directly between the neck and the chair which also provides support and assist with relaxing when in a confined space.
In the past, there are two primary types of horseshoe-shaped neck pillows, pre-filled with materials and inflatable. The inflatable type of neck pillows are compact and allow the user to easily store the inflatable type of neck pillow in the luggage of the user until required by the user. When the user needs the inflatable type of neck pillow, the user needs to remove the inflatable type of neck pillow from the user's luggage and then must inflate the inflatable type of neck pillow. Unfortunately, this requires the user to spend several minutes blowing and or breathing air into a fill port of the inflatable type of neck pillow. This is both time consuming and can be exhausting to many users. Further, unless the inflatable type of neck pillow is properly inflated, the inflatable type of neck pillow tends to provide insufficient support. If the pillow is too inflated, the support is too stiff while if under inflated, the support is insufficient. Additionally, the regular plastic material used to contain the air within inflatable pillows may cause the user to retain heat during use as it is not necessarily a breathable material directly behind the wearer's neck.
Another type of horseshoe-shaped neck pillows are pre-filled with foam, feathers, or organic granular or bark-type materials. The problem with these types of horseshoe-shaped neck pillows are that they take up space in the user's luggage. The bulky form factor for these types of horseshoe-shaped neck pillows can take up approximately ⅓ of a carry-on piece of luggage and with today's limited carry-on capacity, portability has become an important value proposition when buying neck support devices. Further, once the traveling time is over, this type of horseshoe-shaped neck pillow becomes a weight to be carried around and stored until the next usage. From a functional perspective, these types of horseshoe-shaped travel or neck pillows can push the neck too far forward which is uncomfortable and not an appropriate position for the neck.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a device and method that overcomes the above problems.